1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus, and more particularly to an apparatus for recording image signals on recording media having different write speeds.
2. Description of the Related Art
A known conventional digital camera photographs an image and records it in a memory card as digital data.
Various digital cameras of this type have been proposed recently which can record not only still images but also moving images for a predetermined period, which are disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-300444.
If moving images are taken with a digital camera and recorded in a memory card as digital data, it is necessary to record data of a plurality of consecutive frames. However, a write speed of memory card is often slower than a data rate of moving image data. Conventionally, picked-up image data therefore is encoded and thereafter stored in a large capacity buffer memory, and then the image data is written from the buffer memory to a memory card at a lower rate.
Also when the moving image data recorded in the memory card is reproduced, all the files of the moving image data are read out from the memory card and stored into the buffer memory, and thereafter a reproduction process is executed.
As described above, with a conventional digital camera, moving image data is once stored in a buffer memory and then written into a memory card. Therefore, the length of recordable moving image data is determined by the storage-capacity of the buffer memory. It is therefore necessary to provide a large capacity buffer memory in order to take moving image data for a long period of time, or to reduce a data amount by increasing a compression factor when moving image data is encoded.
However, use of a large capacity memory results in a rising cost, and increasing the compression factor leads to a lowered image quality.
Further, since the reproduction process starts after one moving image data file is completely stored in a buffer memory, a user is required to wait for some time until a reproduced image is acquired.